The Future of IRC

For quite some time now we have used and enjoyed our IRC channel on Freenode. However, a long Twitter mention-chain has occurred, instigated by me (mea culpa!), as to the merits of IRC versus new group-chat solutions.

Keith has come out on the side of Flowdock.

I advocate Slack.

My alter ego suggests we leave it alone and stay with IRC.

It's a battle-royale, a debate to put the 2016 Presidential one to shame! Gentlemen and ladies, take your podiums, and discuss!

Matt: I'm just 'one user on twitter' now? (It's ok, I forgive you, there's very little to tie my two accounts ). But yes, Mobile access/not having to be online to be in the channel would make me a lot more involved I think. As it is I have Slack installed for work/other IRC channels that have migrated so it's the lowest friction for me.

Having to pay for Flowdock seems like too much. A big part of it is I feel no urge to pay for a monthly service to keep me logged in to IRC either.

There's a decent argument for Discord in the channel as its gaming focused anyway, has support for steam integrations and does voice chat in case we ever revive our old W:ET games. Although it may disappear in a few months as I don't know quite how they're paying for all that. Slack at least seems to have a business model.

To whoever managed to put Discord into the poll, thank you. I tried, I failed.

My main arguments against Discord are thus: it has no Linux client, which is irritating, its integrations are worse than Slack's, its in-message formatting is worse than Slack's, and finally its multi-server support is worse than Slack's.

All of these are issues which could resolve themselves, and I'm willing to concede the Linux client problem (it's my own darn fault for wiping Windows and installing Ubuntu). I also don't see why we couldn't find another free voice tool when we do revive the W:ET funtimes.

For me, it would be using N + 1 clients on all my devices because I already use IRC and not just for #idevgames. I don't like IRC but the quirks like being online all the time and on mobile is stuff I've already worked out (via znc on my own server [and who doesn't have their own server ]). I'm not too trusting in gateways either.

Also IRC is open, you can use your client of liking (because people are different & picky), and not going away (but I'd be skeptical of say, discord, surviving).

[edit]:
P.S. After using Slack for a mere minute - I want to use a client that feels like a native Mac application, not a botched up web window with janky scrolling, animations, borders, etc.